Monologues, Scenes, Reviews, Commentaries, One-Act and Full-Length Plays, Interviews, and Events from the World of Theatre

(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 11/6; via Pam Green.)

Though Og the leprechaun doesn’t look a day over 25, no one in the audience at the Irish Repertory Theater gasps when he confesses he’s 459 years old. But there might be some murmurs of incredulity should the sweet colleen he’s been duetting with step forward to declare she’s a 46-year-old mother of three who first played this part on this stage in 2004.

I’m referring to the sterling-voiced Broadway actress Melissa Errico, who stars in the big-hearted, small-scale production of “Finian’s Rainbow” that opened on Sunday night in an adaptation by its director, Charlotte Moore. (Og is portrayed, quite enchantingly, by Mark Evans, who, by the way, is 31.)

Normally, I wouldn’t be so ungallant as to dwell on a performer’s age. But since Ms. Errico recently wrote an essay for The New York Times in which she wondered if she’d passed her sell-by date as an ingénue, it is she who has placed that particular elephant in the room. Happily, the elephant is invisible.